Asterism

21. the one

There's an A/N at the end of this chapter that I'd really appreciate you all read! I didn't leave it here because it's been a while since an update and I want to give you all the chapter without further adieu (anyone remember this reference 🤣, oh Leo).

Don't forget to vote and comment if you enjoy, and are excited for future updates! Even taking a second to click the little star button helps propel my books in the rankings, get it more attention, and it's a completely free way to make me smile 💕

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BEFORE heading for the Yale dorms, Marley stopped at the first local park she could find. Quickly hunting down what she needed, she was back on the road again, her fingers tapping obsessively on the wheel, her thumb anxiously fidgeting with his ring.

Throughout the twenty-minute car ride, Marley practiced ice breakers, decided on a sappy speech, then scratched it when it either felt like too much, or not enough. The problem lies, then, in finding the happy medium between those two entities, or else she may have to lose one of the very few people in this world that she can trust and count on. That she can be herself with, that knows her, that would never do anything to hurt or betray her. A best friend like Gabby is not just rare, she's one of a kind.

One night and one fight doesn't change that.

Marley is hoping beyond hope that their friendship is strong enough to be mended through this, because as grateful as she is for her other friends, they haven't known her for fourteen years. She isn't unafraid to share anything and everything with them, and none are the first person she thinks of when she needs a soul sister to confide in. They haven't seen her at her worst, and even Aiden hasn't been there at her lowest. Gabby was, Gabby has seen a part of her heart and soul that only she can help, that only she can speak to, and understand irrevocably.

Marley parked in the residence lot, watching her visitor pass swing from where it was hung beneath the rear-view mirror until it finally stilled. Unlocking her phone with shaking hands, she scrolled through her photo library and her Instagram feed, eyes stinging she took in snippets of over a decade of memories.

Marley let out a sad, sniffly laugh at a video of twenty minutes after they left for their summer before-college 'road trip' to the Matthews' house in Malibu. In the weeks leading up to that day, both had made a big show of checking off huge to-do lists and saying their goodbyes, as if they wouldn't need anything or anyone besides each other for the entirety of their four-day trip. It was an attempt at independence for all the men that were an offensive level of worried about them, and it failed miserably at the side of a busy highway because Gabby had forgotten to fill up her nearly empty gas tank. This video was taken right before Mr. Collins pulled up to the disgruntled, humiliated girls with Aiden laughing hysterically in shotgun, and Gavin and Leo filming from the back seat as they cackled.

Scrolling further back, Marley's smile held at a photo of the two of them the morning of Camp on the Collins' driveway at four in the morning. Mr. Collins is the kind of Dad that insists if there isn't a photo of a memory, it didn't actually happen, so there they were disgruntled and terribly dressed on Gabby's front porch, not even managing smiles. Mr. Collins dragged his wife and son out of the house for one of the photos, both of them half-asleep and Gavin hilariously bundled up in his stepmom's pink rope, Gabby's frog slippers on his feet. This was during the peak of his delinquency, so he refused to budge on holding up the middle finger, and his goodbye to Gabby was a literal celebratory dance as Mr. Collins reversed from the driveway.

Marley continued to scroll, not even able to keep up with the onslaught of snapshot moments bursting into colourful days and laughter and tears and the world of fun they made, even if it was just the two of them. Even if Marley's Mom and brother were gone and she was sad most days, even if Gabby's parents were divorced and her younger brother spiralled out of control. They created their own light in the darkest places, because they weren't alone and that made all the difference in the world.